Before finding success through music, Imany had a first professional life as a model.
A career that has taken her to New York, but which she does not keep only good memories, as she tells it at the microphone of Anne Roumanoff.
INTERVIEW
If she hadn't been a model, she might never have been a singer.
Guest of Anne Roumanoff's show
It
feels
good
, Imany
looks
back on this first period of his professional life, which began at 19, and whose difficulties pushed him to dare to embark on what he really wanted: the music.
>> Find all of Anne Roumanoff's shows in replay and podcast here
"Even if you don't have any money, you might as well do something I like"
Even though Imany has come to live in New York as part of her job, she says she considers herself "a middle class model."
"Why do I say 'middle class'? Because sometimes, I did sublime things. But I could also have a crossing of the desert for months and months to struggle," she adds.
“When there was 9/11, I was in New York,” she remembers. “There was nothing, it was just the
top models
who were working.
This is where we realize we are 'middle class'. "
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These ups and downs gave Imany the strength to choose the path she really wanted to take.
“I think if I had made a lot of money all the time, I wouldn't have had the courage to make music. So that was a good thing,” she explains.
"The fact that I find myself in very complicated situations, without money, I said to myself that even if it means having a hard time, I might as well do something I like".
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"I would bribe my daughter so that she is not a model"
A choice that Imany does not regret: for her, it is obvious that the profession of a model is harder than that of a singer.
"Especially when you start at a very young age, at an age where you are building yourself," she says.
"We tell you every day 'You are not enough this, you are not enough that', while the company does it well like that. You have barely put your foot in the agency that you are told "What's those eyebrows? What's that belly? Your nose would be better if we did it again". It's full of little things like that ... "
It is therefore logical that the singer hopes that her first job will not attract her children.
"If my daughter tells me tomorrow that she is going to be a model, I will gently try to bribe her to do something else."
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A profession far from being a vocation
If Imany had such an easy time leaving modeling, it's because the job has never been a dream she would like to hang on to.
She was indeed spotted by chance in the metro.
"I was coming back from my athletics training on the other side of Paris," she says.
"I had long braids, I was dressed like a tomboy, with big boots, a big helmet. I looked like nothing."
To the point that the future model and singer did not first take seriously her interlocutor, who offered her to join an agency.
"I was totally suspicious, I thought it was a joke," she laughs.
"The good woman next to me, who was eavesdropping on the conversation, was looking askance at me, as if to say 'Don't believe her, this girl is telling you anything'."
Imany still went to her first date.
And the rest, everyone knows it.